


Tremor

by MMXIII



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: M/M, Murder Husbands, Psychopaths In Love, criminal boyfriends, mormor
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-09
Updated: 2013-08-09
Packaged: 2017-12-22 23:13:44
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 799
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/919154
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MMXIII/pseuds/MMXIII
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>'Jim loves Sebastian’s crystalline jaw, his father’s; haughty certainly, but sharper, keener, [hungrier]. Its knife edge is level with Jim’s eyes; his mother’s incidentally, dark and searching, full of broken poetry and half rhymes.'</p><p>(just sorting out character studies before doing something longer ^^)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Tremor

Down a back alley in Soho Sebastian [tall, dark and devastating] dislocates and cracks somebody else’s shoulder; he always fights in the cadence of his worst injuries, particularly after 23 [inflamed] stitches in Rio. ‘That’s gonna hurt like a bitch’ he says mildly, mostly to himself as he steps over another inert client and crouches down to take a pulse [and a wallet].  
‘Hell hath no fury’ says Jim, standing in a [searing] shaft of cold September sunlight, back to the gaping mouth of the alleyway  
[He saw the way Sebastian rolled his own shoulders back, tentatively, then smugly. It’s a pressure point he enjoys being aware of]  
Sebastian habitually scans the concrete horizon before looking up at Jim, cocking his head boyishly, ‘you would know’ he smirks.  
Jim stands across from Sebastian, imperious against a soft grey sky, and mimes a hanging with his left hand, drawing it across his neck then jerking it up drunkenly. The smile on his face is obscene and, most unnervingly, doesn’t match his eyes.

The entire effect is [of course] ruined when he sticks his tongue out at Sebastian who snorts and cracks his neck. ‘Don’t do that, you look like your Uncle Jack’ Jim trills. ‘My Uncle Jack’s got a Jag and a penthouse in the city’ Sebastian grins, straightening up and squaring off his shoulders. Jim shudders involuntarily with glee.  
‘you’ve got a Jag and a penthouse, love’  
Jim slides closer, licks Sebastian’s sweaty blood-flecked ear  
[Jim could sever his jugular, his spinal cord, scratch the smooth surface of his corneas, collapse the chambers of his heart, override his traitorously open mind]  
‘Yeah, but I gotta share ‘em with you, you bastard’ Sebastian counters playfully [sliding his hands in his pockets as Jim aggressively nuzzles his soaking jugular]  
Jim’s hair is darker than usual, but it hasn’t rained  
‘James, y-‘

‘hell is empty’, Jim breathes, ‘all the devils are here’

_Hell is empty_   
_London’s burning_

*

Later, in the 3am light of a trashed safe house, Sebastian stretches himself out on the ruined, rancid [‘dog basket’] sofa. His aristocratically lean wolfhound torso is twisted just so to avoid straining his reinforced shoulder.  
His fingers are curled to his palms, knuckles red, purple, yellow, black; almost fractured, but not quite. Jim can just about make out the red streaks smeared down Sebastian’s neck, disappearing past his open collar. He looks [softly] filthy in contrast to Jim’s manicured monochrome front.  
He looks like a man you'd never want to wake  
he looks lovely  
Jim turns to leave as Sebastian falls asleep.

*

They’re both frightening men, but Jim is playfully envious of the way Sebastian actually looks like a killer, wiry, lawless, a little starved of all the things that make a good man. [You can take the soldier out of the army but Sebastian still sleeps with knives.]  
He’s also still on 3 packs, 2 hours of kickboxing and at least half a murder a day. His long term plans involve staving off chronic respiratory issues with frankly unnerving levels of fitness and then getting shot in the head before he starts falling apart.

In his mind he’s James Dean covered in blood.  
[His & somebody else’s]

Truth be told it’s the malnourishment and the dehydration that enhance the musculature, the terror, that drip from their names. It gives them both that desperate [visceral] edge that keeps their eyes bloodshot and their hands steady.  
It makes Sebastian run faster, hit harder, shoot straighter  
As Jim’s pupils pool out like the sea at high tide, unforgiving but somewhat predictable

And Jim loves the way Sebastian is careless with himself  
[All the relentless precision is for the job]  
The way he feasts after a kill [mad, ravening] then waits, starving in the shadows for weeks chasing down the next one.  
The way he walks like a soldier and runs like a pack of wolves [forever and ever amen]  
Sebastian doesn't tire, he passes out like a man destroyed and rises like a man posessed

Jim loves Sebastian’s crystalline jaw, his father’s; haughty certainly, but sharper, keener, [hungrier]. Its knife edge is level with Jim’s eyes; his mother’s incidentally, dark and searching, full of broken poetry and half rhymes.

He’d also like to unpick the stitching in Seb’s shoulder, scratch his name [all his names] into the titanium pins that hold it together after one dislocation too many [because Jim does hold him together, in the palm of his beautifully awful hand]. Jim knows the colour, the depth, the shape of Sebastian’s blood-soaked [a]nobility under his grey crewnecks. His infamy is their infamy.

*

Alone, Sebastian slides into REM, mongrel-blonde hair pressed into the whisky-soaked corduroy.  
The finger nails of both hands are edged with crusted blood [just like Jim’s eyelashes, Jim’s teeth, James’ silent, crawling heart]

**Author's Note:**

> 'Hell is empty...' - Shakespeare, The Tempest ^^


End file.
